Comment by anonms-coward

5 years ago

I think this is very important.

Mob justice over what people said years ago is very dangerous. And due to the global nature of the internet, it is very hard to get the mob off your back. It seems many students have been denied their college admissions due to stuff they tweeted as a teenager. It seems in the modern world felons deserve redemption, but bad tweeters do not. Not to mention that cancelling people over what they said in the past is so stupid, that if applied consistently, will lead to funny scenarios. For example, if teenagers should be punished for their past tweets, why shouldn't be Joe Biden for saying on the record that he doesn't support same.sex marriage in the 2008 VP debates. This is not even counting what opinions biden held in the 20th century.

It seems that we have come to a point where you simply can't speak on certain topics, neither in the affirmative nor in the negative, and so most people end up saying what will keep the mob at bay. Case in point, all the people attacking JK Rowling do not want to say that any man who self ids as a woman should have access to women's private spaces.

33 comments

anonms-coward

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RangerScience  5 years ago

> world felons deserve redemption

What do you see in the world that leads you to this?

Edit: I mean, I think they definitely deserve redemption. I don't society doing a good job of realizing this. If you're convinced otherwise, I'd like to be presented with the ideas / experiences that convinced you, so that they have the opportunity to change my mind, as well.

> you simply can't speak on certain topics

You know... that's actually correct, I think, and actually... it's reasonable. What business is it of mine to tell you what your life was like, or who you are, or who you should be? These are things I should shut up and listen about, instead of saying anything at all.

steffandroid  5 years ago

> It seems many students have been denied their college admissions due to stuff they tweeted as a teenager.

How many of them have still been denied after showing genuine remorse for their views? Nobody is owed a college admission.

> all the people attacking JK Rowling do not want to say that any man who self ids as a woman should have access to women's private spaces

Nobody's saying that men who falsely claim to be women should have access to women's spaces.

  • dvtrn  5 years ago

    Nobody is owed a college admission.

    Nobody is universally "owed" anything but we do a lot of good and prudent things anyway because it's entirely within our capacity to execute good and prudent acts and we're sometimes better off for it. And yes we sometimes do bad and despicable things because sometimes impulse overrides reason, but that too is in our capacity to put a handle on and reign in, so we do, or at least we ought to.

    So maybe there's a better way to articulate this dichotomy than the lazy argument of "You're not owed $thing"-which doesn't solve anything for anyone except the speaker's own ego.